Jon Jost

Quote:
This film is a portrait of the passage of one year in the lives of some San Francisco friends, circa 1988 (before the dot.coming of the city), a slow marijuana hazed story which drifts like the fabled fog, encompassing the quirks and habits of a generation that made the city theirs, if only for a while. Very obliquely REMBRADT LAUGHING sketches the time and place, encompassing the Aids epidemic, the casual sexual revolution, the debris of ’68 lingering in the air. A quiet, very San Francisco comedy of life among a small group of friends. REMBRANDT LAUGHING was improvised over the period of about a month by Jost and his friends, mostly acting non-professionals.
(Jon Jost)Read More »

Quote:
ANGEL CITY seems to me one of my most dated works, perhaps because it is in the nature of satires, or the embracing of things-of-the-time (in order to skewer them) that one is necessarily enmeshed with just what one is out to attack, like B’rer Rabbit’s tar baby. Still it has some pretty funny things in it, even now. And as a film it is for the money, a pretty spectacular piece, with aerials, a big crane shot, EFX, all done for a measly (even back then) $6000.Read More »

Autotranslated description:
Impressions from the American Independence Day celebrations in Butte, Montana: evening mood, American flag on the veranda, barbecue, firecrackers, fireworks. A quote from Donald Trump: “Marxists, anarchists, troublemakers and looters destroy our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children and trample our freedom. Your goal is no better America, your goal is the end of America. ”A short, to-the-point comment.
(Mara Rusch)Read More »

Plain Talk & Common Sense (uncommon senses) “is a complex essay-film, a follow-up a decade and some years later to Speaking Directly, and so another State of the Nation discourse, made for Britain’s Channel Four in the year 1986-87. The work involved extensive travel around the United States, and poses an examination of just what America is/was, or what do we mean when we speak of it. Done in a series of radically different sections which collide with each other in a manner intended to provoke thinking, Plain Talk, which was made by an American and intended for American viewers, was indeed
broadcast in Britain, but somewhat predictably, not in the USA. “
–Jon Jost on his website. His website blurb used to be longerRead More »

Slow Moves is a bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably to a drab doom. At once funny, grubby, beautiful, lyrical, tragic and sad. (Jon Jost)Read More »

An essay-film on language and theater, on human communication – intellectual in content, but purely poetic in terms of form: image, sound, language, cinema. Stagefright, with the exception of one shot, was all filmed in a small puppet theater space, actors against black.Read More »

In this independently produced drama, a timbermill owner is having great difficulty sustaining a livelihood due to overcutting and peculiarities of the international trade situation. Despite the damaging effect his mill has on the local environment, he appears to be someone who really enjoys the unspoiled wilderness, because he goes fly-fishing whenever he can. His troubled life edges veers into deeper waters when his daughter sends him a letter in which she accuses him of incest. Whether her story proves to be true or not, it is certain that his life is now ruined forever, as are the lives of those around him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
Somewhere along a desolate highway in Western Montana where the scorched grass burns brown and cotton-ball clouds dissolve into an endless ocean of white, a decrepit old pick-up truck speeds along. The driver, a shifty, uneasy man named Tom Bates fidgets and cackles a rapid, kookaburra laugh. “I mean, what you ever get the feeling that everything was just, just going by you like WHOOSH — just going by, it’s all, all too fast. You can’t, can’t see anything,” he philosophizes to a lanky hitch-hiking hippie sitting in the passenger seat. “I guess, well I guess what I got to do is sort through some of this shit, y’know, just get some of this shit outta my life,” he continues as his passenger sits in solemn silence.Read More »

Ricky, a dim-witted ex-con, meets Beth, a dim-witted waitress, in an Idaho diner. They take off in his car to Washington and begin an affair. Beth, a lonely romance-novel addict, is hopelessly enamored; Ricky is just in it for the (constant) sex. Beth’s longing to visit California and Ricky’s longing for quick cash leads them into a desperate situation. Director Jost uses a variety of avant-garde visual and narrative techniques, such as montage, collages, split screens and lengthy, tongue-in-cheek monologues to tell the tragicomic story of two complete losers in love.Read More »